Pages

Thursday, March 25, 2010

What DID We Do All Day?

This morning I finally had time to make egg puzzles that practice CVC words. I didn't take a very good picture. I saw them first over at My Montessori Journey so you can peek at her post to get a better look. There are 28 eggs in the set (seven in each of four colors). Kal-El saw what I was making and was going crazy waiting for me to finish. I gave him the green set and was cutting and laminating like a whirling dervish because I had a feeling he would want to do them all immediately. I just barely kept ahead of him with each new set. I think we are just about ready to start the blue series.

This week marks the first time we have had trouble with "b" and "d" reversals. This would not be a problem if we had started with cursive. You can read a multiple-part series (four parts at the time of this posting) on the reasons for starting with cursive over at A Montessori Journey ("A Montessori Journey" and "My Montessori Journey." I get confused too. I think there used to be an "Our Montessori Journey" as well, but couldn't find it in my reader). I asked her to write an action plan for those of us who taught our children print before we discovered Montessori. She did, and as I have often seen on the Montessori groups the party line seems to be "it's never too late." I agree, but I don't think that the middle of the pink series is a good time to make the switch. It is definitely not too late to teach Me Too cursive since he doesn't remember any of his print sandpaper letters anyway. However, if you had spent countless hours making language materials for your first child in print would you want to do start from scratch with the second child?

I'm not overly concerned about the reversals. It would be better not to have this problem. But at the same time, children all over the country have this problem regularly and most eventually get over it. Because of the nature of the materials we have been using, Kal-El has been correcting his own reversal errors. It was pretty clear when he couldn't find a picture of a "bog" that he had reversed the first letter. He sounded it out again, making the correction, and was delighted to find a picture of a "dog."

Grammie and Bumpa visited today. I ran to the library to pick up a fat stack of princess/dragon/knight books that were on their last day of reserve for me. Me Too and Kal-El played games with their grandparents. Later, I was able to enjoy some time as a couch potato while Grammie (the dispatcher) came up with various problems for "Officer Kal-El" to resolve. He rounded up escaped monkeys, rescued school children from bears that were eating their peanut butter and jelly lunch sandwiches, and extricated a hippo from a zoo train. The grandparents brought their little dog along so she was Kal-El's police dog.

Come to think of it, the dog probably needs her own incognito blog name. I'll think on that. The first names that come to mind are unusable (my family can certainly imagine what I might be coming up with), but that's because I don't like most dogs. The boys love her dearly and would be seriously distressed if her bloggy doggy name were less than noble.

4 comments:

We had some problems with b and d reversal for about a month, but then they "magically" disappeared. It's all a matter of practice :) I can't wait to see which books with dragons and princesses you have found.

Here is another perspective http://www.blog.montessoriforeveryone.com/cursive-vs-printing-is-one-better-than-the-other.html

I wish I could find a set of letters like these http://www.lisheenmontessori.com/product_view.php?id=170 They are the closest I have seen to the simple cursive letters Margaret Homfray used in her video. In this video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7518059248722572343&ei=hBasS4LdLKXKqwL34dzQBg&q=Margaret+Homfray# on the moveable alphabet she talks about using cursive sandpaper letters and cursive writing but print moveable alphabet letters as that is what occurs in books. She says very few children have any trouble switching but the ones I see all have the connecting lines which I think might make it harder.

So far I have bought print sandpaper letters for my son who is almost 3. I think consistency is the key so I would go with what the child will be using in his/her educational environment for their primary education.

I will be interested to see what other people think. What does the course you are taking use?

I think confusing the letters is going to happen no matter what you use. Beeper has not only had trouble with 'b' and 'd', he has trouble with 'i', 'l', 't', and 'j' with the d'nealian letters. We've had to work on the fact that not everything with a little swoop on the end says 'j'. He has gotten a lot better, though, especially with 'b' and 'd' just through the practice of reading. Personaly, I think there's a lot of cursive letters that can be mixed up easily too. I always thought 'b'and 'l' look a lot alike.

And yeah, in the middle of the pink series is definitely not the time to switch. It's more about writing than reading anyway. (Although I'm wondering whether some of us are destined to have bad handwriting no matter what. I'll get back to you on that in a couple of years. lol.)